Taking office with the promise to create jobs, Ohio’s GOP Gov. John Kasich has achieved little but dismal poll numbers in pursuit of a deeply unpopular agenda. Indeed, his attempt to demolish workers’ rights recently earned him an unprecedented rejection of a governor’s signature legislation within the first year in office.

But Senate Bill 5 represented only one pillar his misguided plan. On top of allowing guns in bars and passing corporate-friendly budget blows to Ohio’s vulnerable populations, Kasich is opening Ohio’s state parks to fracking — a method of natural gas drilling that contaminates water supplies with radioactive material.

Seventy percent of Ohioans oppose Kasich’s plan to drill on public lands. And for good reason, as one home in Cleveland, Ohio actually exploded after gas seeped into its water well. But Kasich remains obstinate in his support: “Ohio is not going to walk away from a potential industry.”

According to new report from the nonpartisan Common Cause, however, the oil and gas industry may have provided Kasich with plenty of reasons not to walk away. Kasich has taken $213,519 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, “the most of any Ohio politician.” Kasich’s spokesman Rob Nichols insisted that the fracking policy is solely for jobs, and that the industry has been “warned” to follow Kasich’s “environmental rules and regulations”:

“Over the next four years, shale is expected to create more than 200,000 jobs in Ohio and bring in nearly half a billion dollars in additional revenue to the state,” [Nichols] said. “While the governor has warned the industry that they better play by our environmental rules and regulations, we are glad to have the support of an industry that is poised to reinvigorate Ohio’s economy and put a whole bunch of Ohioans back to work.”

It’s unclear what rules and regulations Kasich actually plans on enforcing. Because of then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s request in 2005, the federal EPA was stripped of its power to regulate fracking. What’s more, Kasich appointed a Dubai oil and gas executive to run the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) — a move which will unlikely yield environmental regulation.

In naming his business-friendly directors for Ohio’s EPA and ODNR, Kasich said he wants to “exploit the wonders of our state.” And this willingness to exploit state lands and parks earned him the largest check in Ohio from the oil and gas industry. “We give campaign contributions to support those candidates who support good government and who support the development of reliable and plentiful energy supplies in Ohio,” said the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. “We do not support candidates who do not support those concepts.”

Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The GOP is voting to make Paul Ryan's budget unconstitutional.

Here’s a simple question for the 235 House Republicans who voted for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget, and who also plan on supporting an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would mandate balanced budgets when it comes up for a vote this week: Why did you support a budget plan that you also think should be considered unconstitutional?

This is a serious question. Last April, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a budget that made a lot of dramatic changes. It slashed Medicaid, ended Medicare as we know it, gutted public investments in education, transportation and science research, cut huge holes in the safety net, and dramatically cut taxes for rich people, while raising them for everyone else. But there’s one thing it didn’t do. It did not balance the budget — not for nearly 30 years anyway.

And yet, those same House Republicans are now poised to vote for a constitutional amendment that would require the budget to be fully balanced as soon as 2018. If they get their way and the constitution is changed, the Ryan budget plan — the same one that they supported just months ago — would produce more than 20 years of budget deficits, each and every one in violation of the highest law in the land.

Of course, this push to change the constitution is just the latest twist on an old idea. Back in the 1990s, congressional Republicans also thought that the only way to get to a balanced budget was by constitutional fiat. That belief proved false, as Congress balanced the budget just fine by 1998 without having to change the constitution. But as with so many other right-wing economic ideas that should have perished long ago from exposure to facts, this one just won’t die.

A balanced budget amendment might sound good in a press release, but it’s not a serious budget proposal. You can’t fix the country’s fiscal problems by simply deeming them to be “unconstitutional.” You have to actually change the tax code so that it raises more revenue. You have to identify specific programs and services and benefits that will be cut to reduce spending. And you have to implement policies that will directly address underlying economic weaknesses like extremely high unemployment, a struggling middle class, and increasing income inequality. Passing a balanced budget amendment accomplishes precisely none of those goals (and, in fact, makes accomplishing them even harder).

But this week’s debate over a balanced budget amendment isn’t really about fiscal policy. It’s about scoring political points. Otherwise, how can anyone who voted for the Ryan budget plan possibly vote for a bill that would make their preferred budget path unconstitutional?

House Republicans have made little secret of their contempt for federal foreclosure prevention, voting to kill off a host of programs under the theory that federal efforts to keep people in their homes “need to stop.” And one casualty of the GOP’s budget cuts has been foreclosure prevention counseling. As the Kansas City Star noted, the Republicans’ refusal to fund housing counseling has caused counseling centers across the country to shut their doors:

Federal funds aimed at pulling struggling homeowners out of the foreclosure crisis have dried up, a victim of Washington’s budget battles. Nonprofit agencies around the nation are closing offices, laying off counselors and referring desperate homeowners elsewhere.

Cutbacks are hitting even as the pace of foreclosure activity has begun to grow again after paperwork and processing problems had slowed lenders down over the past year.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been lobbying the Republican House to start funding counseling again, to no avail. This resistance comes despite a study by the Urban Institute finding that homeowners who use foreclosure counseling avoid foreclosure “more frequently and avoided a return to default more often than their unaided counterparts.” Foreclosures hit a seven-month high in November, as banks restarted their foreclosure processes after temporarily halting them in the wake of the robo-signing scandal.

The Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention programs have left a lot to be desired, as housing continues to be a drag on the economy. Instead of engaging with the problem, Republicans have chosen to slash what few funds remain to help people on the ground, needlessly pushing more homeowners into foreclosure.

Late last month, a national backlash forced Bank of America to abandon its plan to charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. But Huffington Post reports that the corporation has quietly been mining other sources of fees, preying on its most vulnerable customers to rake in millions in revenue:

Shawana Busby does not seem like the sort of customer who would be at the center of a major bank’s business plan. Out of work for much of the last three years, she depends upon a $264-a-week unemployment check from the state of South Carolina. But the state has contracted with Bank of America to administer its unemployment benefits, and Busby has frequently found herself incurring bank fees to get her money.

To withdraw her benefits, Busby, 33, uses a Bank of America prepaid debit card on which the state deposits her funds…Busby visits the ATMs in her area and begrudgingly accepts the fees, which reach as high as five dollars per transaction. She estimates that she has paid at least $350 in fees to tap her unemployment benefits. [...]

In short, the same banks whose speculation delivered a financial crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs have figured out how to turn widespread unemployment into a profit center: The larger the number of people who are out of work and dependent upon the state for sustenance, the greater the potential gains through administering their benefits.

Millions of jobless Americans like Busby have little choice but to rely on the bank’s prepaid debit cards to collect their monthly benefits. Forty-one states have contracted with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and other banks to provide access to public benefits, allowing them to collect unlimited fees, both from the unemployed and state governments. South Carolina, for instance, pays Bank of America a fee for each transfer it facilitates on a debit card, and for handling direct deposit of unemployment benefits.

Families who are living hand-to-mouth are outraged to discover that banks worth trillions of dollars are taking such a big cut of their benefits, when they depend on every penny. The New York Times reports today that banks have been quietly raising fees on everything from replacing lost cards to monthly maintenance. BofA customers can be charged $1.50 for speaking to a customer service operator more than once a month, $1.50 for using an “out-of-network” ATM, and $0.50 for entering the wrong PIN number too many times.

Bryce Covert at New Deal 2.0 reported earlier this month that, “big banks are making a tidy profit by acting as middlemen for what should be publicly provided services.” U.S. Bancorp made $357 million in revenue from its unemployment benefit card division — more than one-fourth of its total revenue. Meanwhile JP Morgan “made $5.47 billion in net revenue for most of last year in the division that handles food stamp cards.”

Fed up with big banks’ exorbitant and never-ending fees, customers have been flocking to credit unions. One survey found that credit unions gained at least 650,000 new customers since September 29, the day Bank of America announced its debit card fee.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer "Serve The Banks" Bachus (R-AL)

CBS News’ 60 Minutes aired a report last night alleging that several members of Congress have traded stock using information they received during private briefings or meetings, enabling them to profit from inside information. By far the most damning story was about House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who in 2008, the day after receiving a private briefing from the nation’s chief economic officials on the extent of the financial crisis, proceeded to bet that the stock market would tank:

In mid September 2008 with the Dow Jones Industrial average still above ten thousand, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were holding closed door briefings with congressional leaders, and privately warning them that a global financial meltdown could occur within a few days. One of those attending was Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, then the ranking Republican member on the House Financial Services Committee and now its chairman. [...]

While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts.

Watch the report:

Bachus, who was the ranking member of the Financial Services committee at the time (since the Democrats held the house) made about 200 trades as the financial crisis peaked, netting about $28,000. “What we know is that those meetings were held one day and literally the next day Congressman Bachus would engage in buying stock options based on apocalyptic briefings he had the day before from the Fed chairman and Treasury Secretary,” said Peter Schweitzer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, whose work was the basis for CBS’ report. “I mean, talk about a stock tip.”

CBS also criticized House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for trading health stocks right before the public option was officially killed and noted that former Rep. Dennis Hastert (R) and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R) profited from steering federal earmarks towards projects in which they had a financial stake.

In an attempt to balance its piece, 60 Minutes then found a Democrat to attack — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose husband participated in a special stock offering from Visa while legislation affecting the credit card industry was pending in the House. Unlike 60 Minutes’ allegations against Republicans, there was no evidence provided that Pelosi used her congressional position to unethically enrich herself or that she sought to protect the credit card industry in any way.

Like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Bachus was betting that the country would fail economically, giving him a financial upside in an outcome that would be worse for the rest of the country. Previously, Bachus said that Washington’s role is to “serve the banks,” but in this instance, he seemed to believe that Washington’s role is to serve his own bank account.